Providing practical examples since 1998

Things look quiet here. But I've been doing a lot of blogging at
dan.langille.org because I prefer WordPress now.
Not all my posts there are FreeBSD related.
I am in the midst of migrating The FreeBSD Diary over to WordPress
(and you can read about that here).
Once the migration is completed, I'll move the FreeBSD posts into the
new FreeBSD Diary website.

This article talks about my view of the first FreeBSD Convention, which was held in
Berkeley in October 1999.

Very professional

The first thing I must say about the convention is that it was very well run. A
group of us were discussing it on Wednesday evening between the last session and the boat
cruise. One comment was that for a first-time convention, it was better run than
conventions which have been running for twelve years. Another comment was that it
was very professionally run and the person was quite impressed with the quality of the
organisation. In fact, if I recall correctly, the big hiccup was the lack of water
on the first day of the conference. A broken water main was to blame. But
that's hardly the fault of the organizers.

By all accounts, Pat, Nicole, and April did
an outstanding job. The feedback I received was that the conference either met or
exceeded people's expectations. Of course, there are always people who will grumble
that the food wasn't good (apart from the pizza on one day, it was all great food).
Or that they couldn't get to the sessions they wanted because they were too popular.
Well, my reply to that is food is one area which is very subjective and personal tastes
vary. The food was all of very high quality (pizza excepted) and there was always a
choice. From what I hear, it's a far cry from other conventions I've heard of where
all you get is a boxed lunch (if you get that all all).

The social side

On my flight from San Francisco to Los Angeles, I spoke with a woman who was at a
convention in Concord. It took her two hours to get to the airport. There were
no social events at her convention. Everything was based around the sessions.
That sounds sad. A highlight of the FreeBSDCon was the social get-togethers which
were planned and enjoyed by all. On Monday night there were some informal drinks and
a chance to meet some of the early arrivals. On Tuesday night there was the beer
bash, which was very popular. On Wednesday night, there was a boat cruise which was
sold out. We ate dinner on board (very nice it was) and cruised out to the Golden
Gate Bridge. Many people braved the cold winds and went outside for a close up look
at the bridge as we sailed underneath and along the ocean side of the roadway. It
was spectacular. We also had a close up of Alcatraz on the way back to the
hotel. Everyone enjoyed this event.

As I alluded above, planned social events are
an important part of any convention. It is the contacts and friendships which are
developed at conferences which often prove to be the most valuable part of the trip.
Other conference organizers should not underestimate the value and popularity of such
things.

The history of BSD

It was during the beer bash that I found out that Kirk
McKusick was going to give a talk on the history of BSD. This session proved to
be very popular. Kirk gave us many insights into the early days of BSD and some
details of the lawsuit which are not widely known. I found it very entertaining and
educational. The session was videotaped and I think you can get a copy of the tape
from Kirk's website. Actually, I just checked
there and it's not listed but perhaps the site has not been updated.

Everyone
who attended the conference was given a bumper sticker, a button, stickers, the convention
t-shirt, and a small lapel pin. Everyone who handed in the convention survey was
given a beanie baby.
In addition to the above, I bought a coffee mug, a black cap, and a CD-case. It seems the
mousepads were the thing to have. These ain't your normal mousepad. They have
a very sticky backing on them so they won't move around on your desk. They are
thinner than most mouse pads and have a suede-like surface to them. I've been using
it since I my return and I won't be going back to my old mouse pads. If you can get
hold of one, I highly recommend them.

Another item which was in high demand was Kirk
McKusick's book . I bought my copy and, like everyone else there, had it
autographed by Kirk and Mike Karels.

FreeBSD Internals - the tutorial

This is a day-and-a-half tutorial by Kirk McKusick
and provides a broad overview of how the UNIX kernel provides its basic services.
I'd recommend it only for those people who are planning on writing programs or modifying
FreeBSD. For anyone else, I don't think they would not find it very useful.
Some sort of background in operating system design would also be helpful. As would
a background in C programming. Although Kirk was initially worried that the reduced
course would not meet the expectations of the group, I was quite glad it was as shortened
as it was. I find that too much detail can be stifling. I like to have an
overview of what is possible so I can then go back and get more information.

This course was popular. In fact, it was so popular that after the first session
sold out, the organizers added a second session which also sold out. For the next
conference, perhaps more sessions will be needed. I heard that the second session
had quite a few core team members in it. The attendees I spoke with liked this idea
because of the interaction between Kirk and the core team members.

The sessions

The first session was the keynote address by Jordan Hubbard. He's the release
manager, and does the Public Relations and Corporate Liaison for the FreeBSD Project.

I
also attended Mark Murray's talks on Security. Mark is a great speaker and the
content of his paper is delivered with a great wit and humorous dialogue. Mark's
first talk about about securing your individual machine. It was easy to follow and
to the point. His main point was that a good security person needs to be paranoid.
I agree. The second talk about about creating a firewall using ipfw as an
example. The rules provided were a good base upon which anyone can build their
firewall. The main thing to keep in mind is that you first need to create a policy
and then implement that policy with your firewall rules. For example, you should
first decide who can access what and from where. Only then should you start using
your firewall to enforce this policy. A good thing to remember is that it is easier
to deny everything and then allow only what you want. It is more difficult to allow
everything and then specify what you don't want.

Warner Losh talked about how to distribute and maintain configuration files in a large
complex environment. Although the content of this talk was not directly applicable
to needs, I found it quite interesting to hear about the tools they used and the methods
they employed.

Greg Lehey spoke about the Vinum Volume Manager. This disk abstraction program
can greatly improve disk performance by striping data across two or more disks. The
initial setup can be confusing, but as was demonstrated in the talk, the resulting
increases in performance and/or reliability can be impressive. If you are
interested, I've written up what I did to use vinum which may
help you.

The session I most wanted to attend was the talk by Jonathon Bresler about stopping
spam at FreeBSD.org. It was unfortunately scheduled against my talk on advocacy.

The year ahead

In the next year, we might see as many as 6 books on FreeBSD. That should boast
our profile significantly. Also, I hear that Oracle will be releasing a FreeBSD
specific version of their database. Some large corporates are behind this push and
I'm sure that Oracle will yield to their wishes. Such a move will certainly make the
press stand up and listen as well as capture the attention of the commercial market.

I
also think that more and more people will discover Samba and how easily and cheaply it can provide
a alternative to NT server. Not to mention that running Samba gives you more
stability.